Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source
ZScreen is a powerful, open source screenshot app
by Lee Mathews Dec 5th 2008 at 9:00AM
ZScreen is an extremely flexible alternative. The usual capture options are supported - full screen, active window, or selection and hotkeys can be mapped to a single key or to two or three key combinations.
Handling options are numerous. You can capture to the clipboard, directly to a file, multiple FTP locations, or ImageShack. If you're like me and you need to edit your screenshots in another application (like Paint.net, the Gimp, or Photoshop) ZScreen can capture and instantly open the image in your favorite editor.
It also maintains a cache of your screenshots, saving even if your destination is the clipboard. Having ready access a history of recent captures in their original resolution is undeniably handy, and it eliminates the annoyance of your clipboard getting accidentally overwritten by another copy operation.
You're free to change the size and location of your cache folder, and file naming is extremely flexible. ZScreen can automatically add time and date elements, the active window title, autonumbering, and any custom text you choose.
Captures can be saved in six different image formats and ZScreen can fall back to another option when the file hits a certain size. I've set it to capture uncompressed PNG files up to 500k and then fall back to 90% JPG after that.
There are a few shortcomings, like the lack of a timer function and inability to capture scrolling regions, but it provides all the key features I'm looking for - and then some. ZScreen is free, open source, and runs on Windows only. .Net 2.0 is required.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chad said 11:01AM on 12-05-2008
What does this mean? "inability to capture scrolling regions"
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Lee Mathews said 11:02AM on 12-05-2008
If your web page or app window doesn't fit on one screen, some capture programs can "virtually scroll" and capture the whole thing anyway.
ZScreen won't, it only gets what you can see on your screen "right now."
Chad said 11:07AM on 12-05-2008
Thanks for the explaination. That's a feature I never knew I wanted, but I do now!
phray said 11:07AM on 12-05-2008
Have you tried ScreenshotCaptor? I'm not really looking for a new screen capture utility right now, but I happened across it and noticed that it seems to have lots of features that you mentioned here. I just downloaded it and so for the biggest con I can see is the slightly annoying process of obtaining a 'free license key'. But it wasn't too bad.
Just wondering what you thought.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/screenshotcaptor/index.html
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Lee Mathews said 11:16AM on 12-05-2008
Captor is definitely nice, and I'm sure I'll revisit it now...Mouser makes great apps!
SherylSchuff,CPA said 11:30AM on 12-05-2008
I've been looking for a free app to recommend to my clients. Going to take a look at this now as it sounds like it might fit the bill.
Most of them probably don't need to capture scrolling windows like I occasionally do. I have an older version of Snag-It (that I got during a TechSmith free promo) for those.
Thanks for alerting me to this.
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Mipmap said 2:14PM on 12-05-2008
Why capture screenshot when you can capture a movie? :)
http://camstudio.org/
SherylSchuff,CPA said 6:50PM on 12-05-2008
Movie will capture everything you do including all the time spent waiting for web pages to load (for instance). Also will capture all your mistakes.
Discrete screen shots are easier to control, edit, reuse/repurpose for other projects and with other software.
Just my .02.
Stefan said 1:21PM on 12-05-2008
Is it/Can this be made portable? seems like a nice addition to my USB drive
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Lee Mathews said 1:22PM on 12-05-2008
As long as your machines all have .net 2.0 installed, yes...The runtimes can be made portable, but they're huge and sluggish that way.
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Fred Thompson said 1:12AM on 12-07-2008
Gadwin Printscreen has lighter requirements. It doesn't have the auto-upload support but that's not so critical anyway. Use local storage to control your data. "Something for nothing" is just that, "nothing." http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/
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EiNS said 8:26PM on 12-07-2008
I use picpick for quite some time, anyway i will try this program...hope this one will make me happy ;)
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